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Sol System
The Sol System is the planetary system that orbits a G-type main-sequence star named Sol. As the home system of humanity, it is the most heavily colonized system within the UNCA. Life in the Sol System In the Sol System, life is, for the most part, idyllic. In the 2600s, automation and artificial intelligence govern vast resource networks have made resource shortages a thing of the past- and, because small-scale government functions have largely been turned over to capable artificial-intelligences, social uprisings and rebellion are corrected at a micro-scale before the parties involved even realize that they are discontent. Although they are happy and even fulfilled, citizens are not generally afforded the right to privacy. Every outward action is measured, quantified, and entered into probability matrices to predict future actions. The solar system is home to a surveillance state greater than anything mankind could have predicted- and yet, no brutality or re-education is necessary. To the vast networked intelligences that process the citizen-data of the Sol System, a human mind is a machine governed by natural laws. Mankind has free will- it is just that environmental conditions are manipulated to almost entirely ensure that that free will results in a desired response. Despite the questionable morality of the social control mechanisms imposed upon them, the daily life of a solar citizen is not a dystopian nightmare. For the average citizen, work days are short but meaningful. Many are artists, scientists, bloggers, and writers- and, although very few of them will ever be famous, most are content to pursue work that they find valuable for its own sake. The solar education system emphasis fulfillment, and AI guidance counselors provide career goals that, for the most part, students find intensely intriguing. Unnecessarily strong ambition is heavily curtailed- and, when dissuading such ambition proves impossible, people are encouraged to fulfill their lofty goals within virtual realities. After all, there are many people who seek to rule a world- but few who are actually qualified to do so. In their free time, most humans inhabit virtual realities- and, indeed, the "real" world is seen more as a place that people commute to rather than a place people live. Even those who reject virtual reality, though, live quite well. Earth itself has been transformed mostly into a cultural and nature preserve, altered to form a balance between efficiency and comfort in all of its regions. People who want to experience less technological lives often retreat to Earth, staying there for as long as they feel necessary- and, indeed, many enjoy the rolling pastures and shaded forests of mankind's cradle for the rest of their lives. Urban planning has become a near-perfected art, with cities achieving population densities that remain efficient while still preventing anxiety and feelings of disconnection. For those who want to live in true natural harmony, settlements within equatorial jungles and plains offer the best aspects of primitive life- although their citizens are still subjected to surveillance from afar. Even in these primitive communities, access to medical nanotechnology and implants has greatly changed the dynamics of life and death. Lifespans regularly extend into the centuries, and worries about health and death, while sometimes present, are far and few between. Most people are, to some extent, super-human: enhanced strength, vitality, and intelligence are seen not as superpowers, but as the baseline "human" condition. UNCA Capital Far above the Earth's surface, the Teran orbital rings house the center of the sprawling UNCA bureaucracy. Vast transportation and administrative systems interlink through low-Earth orbit, collectively making up the capital of the UNCA. These complexes house people whose rare combination of ambition and empathy qualify them for high positions in government. Here on the Terran rings, the fate of mankind is debated and decided on a daily basis. While high UNCA officials still live lives of what we would consider leisure, their motivations and driving goals are much less hedonistic than those of their peers. Instead, leaders are conditioned to emphasize the advancement and maintenance of humanity's achievements as a whole. From the time their ambitions are recognized by supervisory AIs to the day they enter the doors of the UNCA parliamentary houses, prospective officials are inundated and indoctrinated with reminders that the good of mankind overrides any of its individual members. This is not to say that the UNCA is a techno-dictatorship masquerading as a democracy. UNCA citizens participate in very real elections, and even the highest echelons of leadership are voted into power by direct democracy. However, many of the governmental roles that are too small to be voted on are filled by the inhabitants of the Terran rings. These highly trained bureaucrats form a de-facto leadership caste that is responsible for answering to and fulfilling the commands of UNCA high command- a task that, for the most part, they perform admirably. Category:System Category:UNCA